Bogdanov kept up the conversation to avoid talking about Antipov and what-was-the-investigation-supposed-to-be-about in case he didn’t like the answers. He pressed Kirov to go to the horse-races with him — you need to relax, boss — then gave up and asked, ‘So where do we go from here?’
Kirov repacked the box. ‘Put the stuff out for analysis. Have you noticed that the drugs all come from a single source?’
‘Some outfit in Bulgaria — Bulpharma — Sofia.’
‘Run the name through records and see whether it registers. Pull me the file if there is one.’
‘Do you want me to check with the local referentura in case they have something that hasn’t found its way back home?’
Kirov paused then answered, ‘No,’ without further explanation.
‘And the woman, Mazurova? Maybe she knows something. Maybe Viktor was going to Bulgaria?’
The apartment was in one of the Khruschev blocks in Chertanovo, a relic of another time of change that now stood in the streaming rain. Tumanov, who tried to be laid-back with an effort that was almost touching, pointed out his team, two men in a pale green Zhiguli sheltered under a tree. It was a routine stake-out; the pile of cigarette butts by the driver’s door indicated that the car never moved; you could have stuck a militia sign on it. Even the dogs didn’t piss on the wheels.
Tumanov tried to be knowledgeable. He talked about the girl in a drawl like a cop in an American gangster movie.
‘She comes from Krasnoyarsk. Her parents are dead. Just a babushka left and she’s pretty far gone; the girl doesn’t visit her.’
‘When did the parents die?’ Kirov asked. Tumanov didn’t know the answer and took the question as a criticism. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kirov told him.
‘I can find out.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’ Kirov was tired of enthusiasm. He stared through the window, through the rain. Bus queues. A Gastronom shop with a window of tinned fish and dummies of the good things that might or might not be available inside. This year had seen a good harvest: witness the price of tomatoes in the street markets and the piles of apples and cabbages. Meat was available too; and it wasn’t the spurious surplus that came when the feed-grain harvest failed and the herds were slaughtered, which meant meat in plenty now and shortages in the months to come. Perhaps things were really getting better.
‘She’s a smart girl,’ Tumanov was saying. He used ‘girl’ though she was older than he was. ‘She has a degree in mechanical engineering.’ That puzzled him. ‘What’s she doing working as a hostess for Aeroflot? Why isn’t she married?’
Kirov speculated on her choices. An engineer in Krasnoyarsk or an employee for Aeroflot with a Moscow resident’s permit. How long had she needed to consider the alternatives? Krasnoyarsk was so dull that no one even bothered to tell jokes about it. Instead she could look forward to foreign travel. And marriage? Perhaps Viktor Gusev had offered an alternative. Viktor could proffer more wealth than some worthy fellow engineer in Krasnoyarsk. What were her choices?
They parked behind the other car. Its driver got out and scuttled over to them, his hat pulled down and his coat shedding water. He had asthmatic breath and the general appearance of a Sluzhba goon. Radek had cleared the shelves of anyone with wits. The man tapped the window and Tumanov rolled it down.
‘Well?’
‘Nothing.’ The man whistled as he breathed. ‘No movement. Nothing. She stays in the apartment and does — whatever she does.’
‘Do we have a listening post?’ Kirov asked.
The man looked to Tumanov. ‘It wasn’t authorised.’
Tumanov said, ‘We didn’t have the resources.’ Reproachfully he added, ‘Radek has commandeered all the best goods, the best troops.’ He ignored his man, who was indifferent to being second rate, and spoke in a murmur. Another grain to add to his burden of guilt. He probably saw Kirov notching another black mark against his record.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Kirov assured him, knowing that Tumanov would doubt his sincerity. He looked across the bare earth that surrounded the apartment house. The potholes were full of water and rubble. A couple of small cars were roped down under tarpaulins.
‘Fourth floor,’ said Tumanov’s man. He handed a piece of paper through the window. A number was written on it.
‘I’m going up,’ Kirov said.
‘OK, I’ll get my mate.’
‘I’ll do it alone.’
‘You don’t know what’s in there.’
‘The Colonel will go up there alone,’ Tumanov said.
Kirov got out of the car, stretched his legs and looked up and down at the road and the other identical blocks. Behind him a voice whispered urgently, ‘How was I to know he was a bloody colonel?’
Kirov asked, ‘Have the militia paid a call yet?’
‘No,’ came the answer, ‘no, comrade Colonel.’
Kirov turned round but the man’s face displayed nothing save official respect. Kirov faced the apartment house again and set off across the open ground, avoiding the mud and the puddles.
The elevator was out of action, the stairwell smelled of urine, trash had collected in the corners of the common areas. Kirov knocked at a door covered in peeling paintwork and heard a radio being turned off and the pad of footsteps. Nadia Mazurova opened the door.
Her appearance had altered. Now it was familiar, which was about as altered as you could get. The other changes were superficiaclass="underline" her dress was of brown wool, her blonde-streaked hair was pinned back and her ears revealed pearl studs, which he supposed were imitation. She was wearing a cheap though not unpleasant perfume; Kirov noticed it and wondered if she made a habit of wearing perfume under all circumstances as though she spent her life waiting for Viktor Gusev to knock at its door.
She was hesitating and he remembered that he had never given his name. She believed only that he was with the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
‘Kirov — Pyotr Andreevitch — investigator.’
‘Please, comrade investigator, come in.’
She introduced him to a small square-shaped entrance hall that was hung with damp coats, then into another small room a few metres square which was crowded with furniture: a television set, a folding table, a couch that was made up into a bed and still showed bedclothes peeping from the frayed edges, an old sideboard covered in lace and photographs. A box refrigerator stood on top of the sideboard and purred. An old lady with mumbling lips and a heavy shawl was sitting on the couch and watching the blank screen of the television set. The place smelled of stale tobacco and food.
‘You are living here? This is not your apartment.’
‘For a few days. Please sit down.’
Kirov placed himself on a bentwood chair. She took a seat on another, unconsciously measuring out the distance between them and angling her chair so that it did not oppose his. Within the limits of the room she achieved what remoteness she could.
‘My friend,’ she said, ‘is allowing me to stay here. She lives with her parents. They are all at work.’
Five people. Kirov surmised a single bedroom. The couch in the main room would fold into a bed, and on the floor behind the television set was a roll of blankets.
‘After Viktor’s death I didn’t want to be alone,’ she explained.
‘At the hostel…’
‘The girls are not company. They are too … merry.’
‘You’re not at work?’
‘I had some leave scheduled. Can I offer you some refreshment? A glass of tea? Vodka?’ She stood up to action his request and her dress fell loosely, the skirt cut to dip at the waist in emphasis of the shallow drooping curve of her belly as gentle as a raindrop. There was no sexual intent behind the gesture, no invitation in her manner, but Kirov was conscious of her live sexuality. He had felt it before in that first unsatisfactory interview at Gusev’s apartment when she described her implausible relationship with Viktor and asked him to accept that she and Viktor were not lovers but something else. ‘Thinking with your balls,’ Uncle Bog chided him. Thinking of all the Laras and trying to imagine Viktor Gusev’s different way.